Barley with rocket and mussels

Cucinareconlentezza is on tour in Rome! Which means several things: 

_I spend my days helping out my mum and despite my very progressive ideas I realised I am a perfect housewife

_I can take pictures with the big Nikon

_I can cook mussels

The other day I was looking for something light but fancy to cuddle my mum without loading more weight on her recently refurbished back and I though about a nice pasta salad I ate once upon a time in my previous life, when I happily was a fashion designer :) so I came up with the following:

BARLEY WITH MUSSELS AND ROCKET

I boiled the barley and added chopped cherry tomatoes, rocket, EVO oil and the mussels I cooked with a garlic clove and EVO oil. 

Ars

Death by Pizza

In my many monologues against the capitalistic society, the culture of inducing the needs for strawberries in December and the Ikea packagings that always contain double of the amount of what you actually need, I never really say that there are (at least) two fields in which I cannot manage myself to apply whole idea of enough: shoes (of course!) and food. While when I buy shoes I am aware that I am violating the same principles I passionately defend for the rest of the day, with food is more of a primordial italian housewife kind-of-thing, the chubby italian mamma for whom it is a matter of honor to stuff her guests until death. And I think I did recently with pizza. 

PIZZA DOUGH

Make a nice fountain with 1 kg of flour and place in the hole 25 gr of yeast melted in warm water and 2 spoons of sugar, some more warm water with 6 spoons of oil EVO and some salt and start mixing. Add slowly warm water until the dough is nice and elastic (total water should be around 600 ml). Leave it to rest in a warm place for a couple of hours. 

PIZZELLE FRITTE

I made little squares of pizza dough and let them rest for another half an hour, then fried in oil and seasoned with coarse salt, tomato-garlic-basil sauce and grated parmigiano

PIZZA WITH RED PEPPER, POTATOES AND CAPERS

(I added red pepper, mozzarella, potato slices and capers)

GIRANDOLE WITH ZUCCHINI AND PINE NUTS

I made a rectangle of dough and added mozzarella, zucchini cubes, dill, basil and crushed pine nuts. I rolled it and cut small girandole about 3 cm thick, then placed them in the baking tray to rest another 30 mins

PIZZA WITH TROPEA ONION AND PEPPER

My fav. Also black olives if I had them.

PIZZA WITH NUTELLA

If your guests, for some reasons, are still breathing, this will be the final straw (guaranteed!)

Quinoa with zucchini tagliatelle and shrimps

How many of you work for a boss that saves the shrimps' heads and delivers them to your door, so that you can make fish stock? That's what happened last Friday, and I was able to make stock frozen cubes that will last for a few times. First recipe is this quinoa thingy that I prepared listening to Matthew Bellamy singing (with his typical I-have-a-very-bad-stomachache voice) Supermassive Black Hole to get ready for the Muse concert happening in 10 days :D :D :D

QUINOA WITH ZUCCHINI TAGLIATELLE AND SHRIMPS

I prepared a fish stock with the shrimps' heads and used it to cook the quinoa, adding fresh dill, hot pepper and oil EVO when ready. Shrimps were pan-fried for few minutes and the zucchini tagliatelle recipe belong to S1 :D

Pesto couscous with patate and fagioloni

When you invite someone for dinner and only then open your fridge and realise that 1) your fridge only contains pesto, potatoes and broad beans and 2) shabbat is already started so no chance of increasing the variety, well that calls some very healthy-but-still-possibly-fancy pestopatatefagioloni :)

PESTO COUSCOUS WITH POTATOES AND BROAD BEANS

Boil the broad beans in salty water until tender, then boil the potato cubes in the same water. Potentially both of them could be pan-fried for a couple of minutes with a garlic clove and some EVO oil, but I preferred to stay on the light side. With the same water, prepare the cous cous adding one cup of boiling water to one cup of couscous, sealing with a lid. 

I made the pesto the day before using half basil and half rocket, plus parmigiano, EVO oil, garlic and cashew nuts. I took one round ikea tupperware, put some pesto couscous inside and made the nice dome in the plate, then added potatoes and broad beans. I made the parmigiano disks pouring grated parmigiano in a hot non-sticky pan for a few seconds. 

Petite aubergines with chicken&ginger balls

I fell in love. Few days ago. True story! No idea aubergines came also in their petite 2.0 version for singles. For singles not because one makes a portion, but rather because only singles may have evenings to waist digging holes into petite aubergines (I made kind of 20 of them). 

So we are in the supermarket to buy milk and cucumbers (as we consume milk and cucumbers as if tomorrow never comes) and 20 petite aubergines are calling us from the shelf, so we decide to give them a shelter. From that very moment, at least 20% of my CPU has been running on a continuous basis only to give my aubergines the death they deserve. 

We are definitely in our stuffing period @Arlozorov73 (see below), so stuffed aubergines, but with what? I thought about something very light and easy: aubergines cubes, tomatoes and the very mint that grows between the life science and the biotechnology buildings (chance of severe food poisoning: very high, but in Silviot's mansion mint plants generally die before we even agree on their name)

PETITE AUBERGINES WITH CHICKEN&GINGER BALLS AND TZATZIKI

Dig the petite aubergines not thinking about the fact that you are spending the evening digging into petite aubergines. Make small cubes with the inside and place in salty water for ~30 mins. Place the outside upside down with some salt inside. Mix the cubes with tomato concentrate, breadcrumbs, fresh mint, chopped garlic, lemon zest, little oil. I added also some shredded hard cheese that was left in the fridge, and was about to add chopped cashew nuts but S1 is not a fan. Fill the aubergines with the stuffing and a lot of love.  Bake in the oven until shiny and tender.

In the meantime, I blended one chicken breast and mixed with bread (wet in milk for few minutes and then well squeezed), ginger, salt, hot pepper and one egg. Made small balls and rolled them in breadcrumbs, then placed in a baking tray with little stock and baked until golden, checking from time to time there is some liquid. 

Lastly I made tzatziki by grating one cucumber and squeezing it to release the water. I added greek yogurt, garlic, salt, lemon juice and pepper. 

If I am the aubergine queen, I share my flat with lady courgette :) so the previous night she made a dinner that deserved my nikon: round courgettes stuffed with smoked salmon and curry. Yummy and superlight. Ask her for details!

A non-post

The past week a friend of mine was visiting Silviot's mansion, hence we did not use the kitchen almost at all and tried out a few yummy places around TLV instead. 

Awesome, except I have no material now. I was getting superbored in the bus, before deciding to write a non-post instead with a picture of non-food :) 

Two friends of S1 came over and we were in the post-Shabbat superlazy couch mood, so to maximise the siesta time we served mixed vegetables, tahini (S1 is the queen of tahini, amongst other thing) and humus, wet with a couple of glasses of red wine. Because to cook with slowness it is fundamental to admit that cook with slowness is not always the best choice :)

While I am thinking about the next "postable" recipe, I'd like to suggest an amazing reading to all my italian friends: Spora is my new guru as far as high heels, being independent and pursuing happiness (even though she is better than my mum only for the first bullet point). 

And to conclude, the quote we have in our fridge:

Stay tuned!